The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia
1–10 of 353 posts
Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia
#2"Here is what to do if you want to get a lift from a Vogon: forget it. They are one of the most unpleasant races in the Galaxy. Not actually evil, but bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous. They wouldn't even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal without orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters."
-The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia
#3Yeah, I've had similar experiences with Wikipedia. In the end I just gave up trying to contribute. Some user even has a bot that now chases me around when I make edits...
Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia
#4I had similar experiences with Wikipedia. First time, I added some references and definitions related to a theoretical computer science concept and it was deleted for no reason.
Since then I stopped making edits unless something is incorrect.
Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia
#5First of all, the author is wrong. Someone saying "Hey, I know that person, they're an expert on X," does not mean they belong in an encyclopedia. Furthermore, a sizeable group of people already had a discussion on whether the person meets Wikipedia's standards and decided that they do not.
Now, the author feels entitled to barge in without learning anything about how Wikipedia actually works, and complain that it's too hard to find the right place to go and complain. The author even managed to complain when someone helpfully pointed out that he went to the wrong place to revise a pointless and already settled argument.
Seriously, this is a Wikipedia success story. If this person had been allowed to just barge in and trample Wikipedia's policies on who is notable, despite having zero knowledge of how Wikipedia works, that would have been a Wikipedia failure.
If the author had just been willing to spend half an hour learning about Wikipedia's policies instead of bitching on a blog, and figured out how to revive an already-settled issue, he could have successfully managed to waste people's time on this. But no. "I demand to be listened to NOW, and if I'm not, Wikipedia is Closed and Unfriendly."
Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia
#6I changed 'tyre' to 'tire' in an article and got a vandalism notice on my talk page. That's when I stopped contributing.
Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia
#7I had similar experiences with Wikipedia. First time, I added some references and definitions related to a theoretical computer science concept and it was deleted for no reason. Since then I stopped making edits unless something is incorrect.
I think a lot of the problem is that measuring editors by edit count is like measuring programmers by lines of code.
Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia
#8I'm sorry about your case and the frustration that you had to face. However, they must be doing something right since Wikipedia has millions of user contributed pages? Also it might not be easy to administer a website of that size where anyone is free to go ahead and edit any of the hundreds of thousands of pages. Maybe they are settling for 99% satisfaction? That said, they do need our donations.
Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia
#9I had similar experiences with Wikipedia. First time, I added some references and definitions related to a theoretical computer science concept and it was deleted for no reason. Since then I stopped making edits unless something is incorrect.
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Re: The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia
#10The thrust of his arguement is that since he believes Jessica is more notable than he is, and wikipedia has an existing article about him then his opinion should count.
However, an alternative conclusion could be that he isn't notable by wikipedia's standards and his article should also be deleted.